5 ms·

Can it be proven that they don't feel pain?

by Valmar 9y ago

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
No. Then what about sponges, plants, or rocks for that matter? Can't prove that they don't feel pain.
- mojomark 9y ago
  Listen. You cannot definitively prove that fish experience or don't experience pain anymore than you can definitively prove that OJ Simpson murdered his ex-wife. However, you can build a body of evidence to support a conclusion. You can build up so much evidence that it seems impossible to refute, but even then, there will still be a tiny probability that the conclusion is false. That's what science experiments are all about. It's about probability; evidence pointing to a probable truth. How one interprets the evidence is certainly up for debate. Humans are walking experimenters. As we go about our lives, we collect evidence that we use to draw the most probable conclusions about the world we live in. For example, I've concluded that the my coffee mug will not spontaneously begin to levitate on my desk because all of the evidence I've collected in my life (years spent watching the mug and other similar objects that never started to levitate on their own, learning about gravity in school) tells me that it's extremely improbable my cup will not remain planted on my desk unless someone/something touches it. However, it's a truism that there is an unfathomably extreme small probability my cup will begin to levitate. We build scientific experiments to collect evidence about things we don't commonly, or wouldn't naturally, experience. For example, in the 1960's, this existence of the Higgs boson was conjectured. The probability of its existence was good, because the math pointed to it, but it was not extremely high probability. We can't 'see' such a particle directly, so humanity built meticulously controlled experimental set-ups to extend our senses and weed out noise that could otherwise obscure the evidence pointing to the 'truth'. Today, we are 99.999999999% sure the higgs boson exist [1], but that's still not 100%. It will never be 100%. That said, if you wish to dispute the conclusions of the author's hypothesis regarding whether or not fish experience pain, then I suggest you do it in terms of the interpretation of the experimental results with citations and evidence to back up your ideas. On HN, I expect a higher caliber of critical thinking. Otherwise, I may as well be reading comments on Yahoo! clickbait. 1. https://phys.org/news/2012-12-cms-atlas-higgs-like-particle-sigma.html https://phys.org/news/2012-12-cms-atlas-higgs-like-particle-...
goldenkey 9y ago
If they are so simple and small that their runtime complexity with regard to manipulating matter is close to 0-- then when you kill them, they die so quick their reaction is only enough to output a bit of data. I for one feel like its moot to debate whether we would feel pain if a giant sliced our head off at the speed of sound. Thats just death-- a fast death with no sensory systems fast enough to notice. Now if youd like to debate about whether death by itself, painless death, is amoral, that would be interesting and relevant to these critters..

Can it be proven that they don't feel pain?

by Valmar 9y ago

Can it be proven that they don't feel pain?

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

No. Then what about sponges, plants, or rocks for that matter? Can't prove that they don't feel pain.

mojomark 9y ago
Listen. You cannot definitively prove that fish experience or don't experience pain anymore than you can definitively prove that OJ Simpson murdered his ex-wife. However, you can build a body of evidence to support a conclusion. You can build up so much evidence that it seems impossible to refute, but even then, there will still be a tiny probability that the conclusion is false. That's what science experiments are all about. It's about probability; evidence pointing to a probable truth. How one interprets the evidence is certainly up for debate. Humans are walking experimenters. As we go about our lives, we collect evidence that we use to draw the most probable conclusions about the world we live in. For example, I've concluded that the my coffee mug will not spontaneously begin to levitate on my desk because all of the evidence I've collected in my life (years spent watching the mug and other similar objects that never started to levitate on their own, learning about gravity in school) tells me that it's extremely improbable my cup will not remain planted on my desk unless someone/something touches it. However, it's a truism that there is an unfathomably extreme small probability my cup will begin to levitate. We build scientific experiments to collect evidence about things we don't commonly, or wouldn't naturally, experience. For example, in the 1960's, this existence of the Higgs boson was conjectured. The probability of its existence was good, because the math pointed to it, but it was not extremely high probability. We can't 'see' such a particle directly, so humanity built meticulously controlled experimental set-ups to extend our senses and weed out noise that could otherwise obscure the evidence pointing to the 'truth'. Today, we are 99.999999999% sure the higgs boson exist [1], but that's still not 100%. It will never be 100%. That said, if you wish to dispute the conclusions of the author's hypothesis regarding whether or not fish experience pain, then I suggest you do it in terms of the interpretation of the experimental results with citations and evidence to back up your ideas. On HN, I expect a higher caliber of critical thinking. Otherwise, I may as well be reading comments on Yahoo! clickbait. 1. https://phys.org/news/2012-12-cms-atlas-higgs-like-particle-sigma.html https://phys.org/news/2012-12-cms-atlas-higgs-like-particle-...

goldenkey 9y ago

If they are so simple and small that their runtime complexity with regard to manipulating matter is close to 0-- then when you kill them, they die so quick their reaction is only enough to output a bit of data. I for one feel like its moot to debate whether we would feel pain if a giant sliced our head off at the speed of sound. Thats just death-- a fast death with no sensory systems fast enough to notice. Now if youd like to debate about whether death by itself, painless death, is amoral, that would be interesting and relevant to these critters..